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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25179571">thoughts and things</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/colbub/pseuds/colbub'>colbub</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>of marigolds and carnations [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Persona 5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Friendship</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-04-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 07:09:16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>16,721</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25179571</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/colbub/pseuds/colbub</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of small extra thoughts and scenes from 'marigolds'</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>of marigolds and carnations [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1824115</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>52</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>570</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Marigolds Discord Recs</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Thanks again for 2000 kudos on marigolds guys! That's a lot more than I was ever expecting for my fic, so when it ticked over 2000 I was wondering how to express how grateful? Happy? I am that you guys like it so much.<br/>Since I posted a few extras a week or so ago and people wanted some back, here it is in oneshot form, cos I'm soft for you guys requesting stuff. I figured I'll make this a Rank 10 oneshot series maybe? </p><p>This chapter features 3 shorts - Wakaba, Minato and a new one for Atsuzawa. They also get progressively longer lol.</p><p>Anyone randomly clicking on this, uh, this all probably doesn't make sense without reading the main fic. Sorry.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Wakaba knows she’s running out of time. There’s always a tense line of nervousness trickling at the back of her spine nowadays, and she feels like something is watching her, always. She has to finish this though, squinting at the chemical names and formulas and predictions and hypothesis on her computer, the numbers blurring in front of her eyes until she reaches for some eyedrops on the side.</p><p>Sojiro is watching her closely, worried over her growing eyebags, her pale complexion. She’s going out even less than before. Her hair isn’t even in a neat bob anymore – it’s a little long at the back and trailing on her shoulders, but she can’t stop.</p><p>Recently, Futaba has been petulantly sitting in front of the television, making a silent point when Wakaba drags herself home through the door. No morning breakfast or lunch bento will make Futaba happy any more, but she can’t stop.</p><p>If she doesn’t finish, hundreds of lives may be in danger.</p><p>If she doesn’t finish, a boy just like Futaba with terrifying, wonderful, amazing potential, will be trapped forever. That child’s sly smile as he sat on that rooftop, swinging his legs over the building, will wither and die. A lonely child, facing scary adult matters seemingly alone.</p><p>If that was Futaba, she would have cried long ago. She would’ve sat down and thrown a tantrum, and yelled for her to come. Futaba would have then smothered her face into her shirt until Wakaba hummed her favourite lullaby, patting her back, before being a little embarrassed as she talked it out.  Wakaba doesn’t love – not like many other people – but she loves her girl, she loves her daughter, and she can’t ever imagine abandoning her and letting her go.</p><p>And she will not abandon Goro Akechi either.</p><p>So she blinks at her screen. Her fingers stumble over the keys of her computer, and she computes another string of formulae and chemicals and tests and slaps her cheeks.</p><p>People call her a genius. Snek-boy approached her because he heard of it.</p><p>It was high time she proved them all right.</p><p><br/>
</p>
<hr/><p><br/>
</p><p>He doesn’t know how long he’s been The Seal. Perhaps a long time and all his friends have forgotten him. Perhaps it’s been a millennia, even, and all his friends are all dead and became dust in a burnt and destroyed Earth. He sees a lot of futures consumed that way. The world destroyed because of fire, from disease, from war, from poverty, from a leader’s bad choices. There are whole leagues of worlds that end because of other worlds – fog leaking through, Gods peeking in, universes brushing together in ways they shouldn’t.</p><p>Minato knows that Elizabeth returns yearly to kill Erebus. She hovers around the time he revives for a few days, and sometimes she’s close enough to see him – sometimes he’s drifted too close to a concept and she can’t find him – but every year she sees Erebus be born and smites him in one blow.</p><p>He sees this every day, and he hasn’t seen her forever.</p><p>It’s hard, to be a Seal that spans universes.</p><p>When he becomes The Universe, he has one, singular revelation. He is a singularity.</p><p>Singularities are rare. Singularities are things that happen in every world and are usually large, world-altering events.</p><p>One singularity is the birth of the world. Another is the end of the world.</p><p>They are inexorable. They are undebatable. They are the foundations of existence.</p><p>Another singularity is this: every Minato Arisato in every universe, whatever he is named, whatever gender, whatever iteration, whatever version – he will always choose to save Earth. He will always step up in front of his friends, stare death in the eye, and choose.</p><p>His life, for theirs.</p><p>The Seal exists in different points in time, and he lives many different lives. He sees them all, as his other selves see him, and in doing so he sees peeks of other Wildcards, other worlds. He sees fleeting truths of the blue butterfly and his wager, and sees how this God views him as one of his champions to example humanity’s strength.</p><p>Those things are too big for him, however. Minato has always been a simple person, wanting simple things. The moments he cares for most are the ones he sees glimpses of his friends. Mitsuru and Akihiko bickering, Junpei and Yukari trying their best to make others happy, Fuuka and Ken exploring the world around them, Koromaru always dying first with a happy smile on his face surrounded by all his friends, beloved hands stroking silver fur.</p><p>And Aigis, living through all their funerals. The years pass, kind and unkind until she finally stands over Ken Amada’s coffin as it is placed into the ground, eyes without tears, holding flowers. She still looks beautiful and sixteen, pretending to be a friend of his granddaughter’s. Aigis waits, through centuries. Androids become popular, space exploration is finished, the world turns digital, humans transform their skills, the Earth is drowned and revived and drowned again, and Aigis waits through it all, an unbending reed refusing to be washed away by the tide.</p><p>It hurts. Not only because she is waiting, but because he feels himself slowly slipping away. Minato is less human than he was before, and the moment he loses all his humanity and becomes a true denizen of the nebulous world in-between consciousness and unconscious, he will forever lose the ability to become the boy who Aigis will wait forever for.</p><p>That is when Goro Akechi stumbles into his domain.</p><p>He’s a little living blip on his radar – a mass of mixed human feelings that keeps churning out thoughts and energy as only one still clinging to his own cognition can. He’s angry and bitter and Minato scoops him up because if he walks any further, he will die. There is only void in the furthest reaches.</p><p>They talk. Menial things, small things. Minato finds himself smiling more than he remembers over the millions (but only seven, according to his home universe) of years he lived through. He shares his past and listens to Goro Akechi’s in turn.</p><p>And like this Minato is less a stretched concept of salvation, hope and endurance. He is Minato Arisato, former Wildcard holder currently humanity’s saviour from Iwatodai. He is one boy again, and not a million Minatos at once, and he feels real for once when he manages to make Goro Akechi crack a smile, then a laugh, then delight in how there is warm light now, in the way that Goro Akechi looks at him.</p><p>And like this Goro Akechi saves him.</p><p><br/>
</p>
<hr/><p><br/>
</p><p>When Fusazane first met Fusatsune, one was six, the other was five, and they both thought having practically the same name the <i>coolest thing ever.</i></p><p>“I’ll be Fusa,” Fusatsune said, cheeky smile in place, “so when they call me I can pretend I thought they were calling you and I don’t need to respond! I’ll call you Zane!”</p><p>Fusazane thought in the back of his head that it’d be even easier if they called each other by their last name – Atsuzawa and Tsuchihashi are really different, and it wasn’t as if they were first-cousins from their <i>father’s</i> side. But Atsuzawa has always been the type to go with the flow, so he nodded with enthusiasm.</p><p>“’Kay,” he replied, and that defined most of their friendship for the rest of their few decades together. As fellow children raised by nannies because their parents 'were too busy', it was lucky in retrospect that they got along like a house on fire.</p><p>Fusa liked talking in circles, went to grungy activist groups that campaigned from whale rights to things like ending blindness in Uganda. He used his innocent Honour Student™ looks to get away with everything in front of their teachers, and secretly never got over his teenage repressed emo phase when he was back home, listening to angry rock from overseas bands who wore too much black eyeliner. He also always chided Atsuzawa for <i>‘not caring enough, Zane, look! Look at these statistics on the state of the Japanese Economy! No, stop falling asleep on me, you lazy worm!’</i></p><p>Atsuzawa – as he’s called by anyone not Fusa – grew up into the intimidating looks of his father and found himself surrounded by delinquents and teachers Expecting The Worst from him. All he actually wanted to do though was pet the dog that lived near his school and have a cute high-school romance with a nice girl who 1. Didn’t want him for his family, and 2. Didn’t run away screaming when he smiled.</p><p>Perhaps he’d continue being the <i>‘laziest fucking worm in existence, Zane, you’re smart and you don’t use it, what, are you going to just live off your family’s money all your life’</i> if he hadn’t been nearly dragged into jail when he was seventeen.</p><p>It was the typical story – he looked at a guy wrong at the arcade, got hauled out to the alleyway. When he was defending himself a policeman showed up and broke them up. </p><p>Things turned for the worse when he found that the guy he was fighting was smuggling a whole bag of drugs. That their fighting had covered Atsuzawa in trace amounts of it everywhere, and the other guy lied and said they had been fighting because of the drugs in the first place.</p><p>Sitting in the cold police cell wondering if his parents would even pick up his call, he was saved when the senior officer at the scene took one look at him and sighed.</p><p>“I’ll take on the case,” Miura said, an exhausted guy with eyebags that dripped onto his cheeks in bags that had bags. A guy, for some inexplicable reason, believed Atsuzawa when he made his statement, went above and beyond to find out the evidence to support it, and in the end, had nodded at him with a clap on his shoulder.</p><p>“Be careful next time, son,” was all Miura had to say in his old suit and tie, small and thin with badly cropped hair and coffee-stained teeth.</p><p>“Thank you very much!” Atsuzawa bowed nearly ninety degrees.</p><p>“Literally my job, kid,” Miura had shrugged. “Makes me feel good when I’m saving someone from the bars, especially since you’re young. Don’t mind.”</p><p>When he got home and he faced a seething Fusa (<i>‘Why didn’t you call me, I have <i>contacts</i> that could have helped you, you raging idiot’</i>) Atsuzawa looked straight at Fusa’s face and said, “I’m going to be a Police Investigator.”</p><p>Fusa, who had long already filled the forms for them to do international politics and economics in university, stared at him like he grew an extra head.</p><p>“Yep.” Atsuzawa nods, yawns, and enrols in Police Academy the next day.</p><p>Being a policeman isn’t the best job he could’ve chosen and his family cast him as even more of a black sheep, but Atsuzawa pushed past all of that. He did the extra degrees and study he needed and entered under Miura (who had been promoted over the years) as a new SIU Investigator. The man was still as mild and blunt as always, didn’t recognise Atsuzawa at all, and he and his team had a great time chasing leads all over Tokyo. Atsuzawa had been delighted working under Miura - he still investigated until the truth was found, he took criticism for the team and Atsuzawa thought this would be it for the next ten years of his life until Miura stood in front of him in an undercover raid. Until, under Atsuzawa's disbelieving eyes, he was shot three times. A shot through the arm, a shot to his sternum and a black hole straight through his neck.</p><p>Atsuzawa was pressing down on Miura’s throat wondering if he was making things worse, was he blocking his breathing, <i>was he even breathing</i> when Miura smiled. He did a hand sign that was vaguely something like ‘don’t mind’ or maybe ‘good job’ and never moved again.</p><p>Atsuzawa attended the funeral, saw the dead face of the man who changed his life, and he didn’t know if he could ever live through another traumatic death in his team ever again.</p><p>Fusa – by then having been scouted into a Government job that he couldn’t say much about – patted his arm and slipped a USB into his pocket.</p><p>“I got your back. I dug up some deets I’m not supposed to have, take it.”</p><p>His cousin also brought him to an animal shelter where he adopted two puppies because most of the team had transferred after Miura’s death and he was the only one left standing. Hiring Naho, raising Momo and Pochi, cycling through interns and agents that barely stayed a year or two, the next few years had Atsuzawa take control of his SIU and absolutely <i>crush</i> the people who led to his death in the first place.</p><p>Fusa looked at his skeleton crew and minuscule budget despite his flawless case records and frowned. A few weeks later he came back with lips locked tight and Atsuzawa knew not to question it. He went with the flow as he usually did, accepting more and more resignations, taking interns that didn’t last a month.</p><p>Then things changed, one year. A big hulking figure with the widest smile he’s ever seen stepped into his office and didn't ditch, for once. “Atsuzawa-san! I am Yoji Takaki! I am extremely honoured to work under you!”</p><p>A few months later, he greeted a pair of cautious, surprised eyes that immediately dipped into calculation. “Hello," the kid said with a smile that felt too smooth to belong on a teen, "My name is Goro Akechi, Atsuzawa-san.”</p><p>Takaki was all bright eyes and eagerness as he passionately told a slightly overwhelmed Atsuzawa that he'd chased his shadow all the way to his SIU unit, just like he did for Miura (and god, was he that old already?). Akechi was another story. The boy didn’t hide his bruises as well as he thought he did and was a cynical old man in ways that spoke of child neglect and unhappy childhoods.</p><p>What a blast from the past. And they were such good kids too, always listening to ‘Atsuzawa-san’ as if he wasn’t just another guy, trying to live his life without regrets. He guided Takaki when he doubted himself, he tried his best to sort through the mess of thoughts that made Goro Akechi.</p><p>And when the day came that Akechi’s weird competence reared its head (he shot a gun, a gun that Akechi has never touched, in a perfect nonlethal shoulder shot within a four second window while sprinting without hesitation, <i>what)</i> all he could think for a long, long minute after the anger, the hospital, the surgery, was thank god. Thank goodness Goro Akechi was there, thank goodness he wasn’t holding yet another bloody hand, go to another funeral.</p><p>(He may have been a little lenient with Akechi’s punishment, but then, he’s never accused himself of being hardhearted.)</p><p>Then.</p><p>Atsuzawa's researching late night, looking over the papers his teen intern gave him of this horrifying conspiracy happening right under everyone’s noses. He's brainstorming ways that he can get him out, trying not to get distracted that some father forced a teen (for how long? No wonder the kid was trying so hard to <i>not be messed up)</i> into something so horrible. When he gives Akechi the button the boy is practically a disbelieving mess that someone actually trusts him, and that's just sad in his opinion.</p><p>Later, he lets him pet his dogs. They eat ramen together, fall asleep at their desks in the office, and the kid has a cutting sense of humour that makes him laugh even on bad days. As Atsuzawa listens to careful explanations of the 'moral intricacies' of Featherman even though he has no fucking clue why these feathered neon figures were so popular, he tries his best to get it through his thick head.</p><p>
  <i>Hey, Akechi. You're not bad, kid.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>I got your back.</i>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Thanks everyone! I'm still mostly writing what I want to read, but I'm really happy to have so many people along for the ride. I recognise so many of your names now (some have stuck around for so long! There are a few of you who comment every chapter, every week, and some type veritable paragraphs every time and I'm always so happy to read your thoughts because it's both such a privilege as well as fun to know how you all think).<br/>No, this side fic won't get updated as a milestone thing. I think I'll update it every few Rank 10s or specific scenes or so. ^^ I'll try to iron out any awkward typos soon hah</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Jose saw many things before he was born. There is energy, and there is the consciousness, and when he was not born the universes flashed by in an eternity of instances filled with history and struggle and beauty and corruption and <i>life</i> as it is supposed to be celebrated.</p><p>There is energy, and there is consciousness. Within that energy, all those waiting to be born experienced all that the universe had to offer and started to coalesce their first, singular wish.</p><p>From their first wish, they think. With thought, they exist.</p><p>And with existence, comes birth.</p><p>Some were birthed into angels of fiery justice, with swords and shields raised high in their crusades of righteousness. Their first thought was one of rage, of hurt, of a burning need to right the wrongs of the world. Supported by all those who dreamed to bring order upon evil, they were born to uphold equality.</p><p>Jose watches them fly with their gleaming wings and hard, unfeeling eyes, ready to bring down their judgment on all that appeared before them. He'd think, speeding in his car down the silver trails of the universe, that he's glad he isn't Justice-oriented. First of all, it sounded tiring, to judge everything all the time. The world had too many possibilities to limit judgments into boxes. What was purity anyway, when a million thoughts held a million perspectives?</p><p>Also they were kind of stuffy to talk to. So <i>boring.</i></p><p>Not all were birthed to Justice, of course. Some were born rulers, taking shape into emperors and tyrants and leaders with visions in their eyes and dreams too large to grasp. Those usually had their first wish defined by something they wanted to <i>control</i>. Rulers were born to possess – to monopolise, to understand, and dominate whatever was so unbearably attractive.</p><p>Jose is also glad he's not Emperor-oriented. He'd climbed their great shoulders and swung his feet while watching them rule. They never seemed to understand what they were. They wanted to control, but control needed power. But gaining power never meant the control of what they wanted, and Emperors always fell, some way or another.</p><p>So they fell, one by one, thousands by the thousands, and Jose thinks that it also must be very tiring, to dream and reach and fall and dream again. There was something wrong when he tried to stick to Emperor, to think about shackling himself to a big ideal.</p><p>Sleeping underneath a particularly violent nebula that was spiralling and spitting out fractals of fire and plasma and dust fuelled by remnants of The Beginning, far, far away from other travellers, Jose thought he liked being free a lot more.</p><p>There were also empresses and lovers, teachers and chaos-loving devils, of warriors and self-sacrificing matyrs, and all of those were all so <i>intense.</i> They didn't really feel right to him when he tried picking some of them up. He found himself liking the heavenly motifs more, but even then nothing really fit.</p><p>Stars were hopeful, Suns were optimistic, Moons were insecure, and it wasn't as if Jose particularly cared about Fate like Fortunes did. He doesn't feel particularly wise, if you get what he meant, and though he might be a little spontaneous and has been described as innocent and a little chaotic, he doesn't feel like he's totally a Fool type either.</p><p>Jose doesn't really know what he is.</p><p>If asked, Jose will answer this:</p><p>He had been born out of a singular thought of <i>curiosity.</i></p><p>There are many other spirits born of curiosity, of course, but for some reason they all shuffled into different segments and categories of their own while he became…</p><p>You know, strange.</p><p>Well, he knows that with so many of them out there that there had to be someone whose first thought would be strange enough that he's not automatically born and transformed into something already existing. His first thought must have been so impressive, for him to be so original!</p><p>The problem is, he doesn't remember what that first thought was. He was just experiencing things one second, and the next second he had a mind that was already running wild about how wonderfully curious his existence is, and like why did this area between consciousness and unconsciousness exist in the first place? Who made it? Why was it here? What was all that he experienced before he was born, anyway? Is there a reason why things like different planes existed anyway?</p><p>He asked a lot of people (he even spoke to Hierophants, and how could they be so dull and boring and bleh all the time?) but no-one really had any nice answers in his wanderings around the multiverses, slipping through the cracks of realities, tinkering along.</p><p>That was, until he found <i>him.</i></p><p>That Person was really big. He, in Jose's eyes, was a great many things that all coexisted together. He was <i>beautiful</i> in his bigness, and when he asked That Person what he was because he'd never seen someone so well-balanced when they had so much stuffed into them (a lot of Deities were off their rockers), That Person laughed in a spray of golden butterflies and replied,</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    <i>I am a philosophy</i>
  </p>
</div><p>There was also a lot of other things implied underneath those words that would've crushed anyone weaker than Jose through the sheer weight of the <i>everything</i> That Person was. Though that wasn't through any fault of That Person, of course. He was a Supernova while everyone was not even a speck of dust, and when Jose stared straight into That Person just even <i>more</i> curious on what, perhaps, a philosophy was, That Person turned to him properly in return and smiled gently in <i>blueblueblue.</i></p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    <i>How fascinating, little one</i>
  </p>
</div><p>When Jose was still not swallowed, they turned into a conversation that began the start of a nice friendship. Jose would go around doing what he liked to do, flitting forms every now and then because no body ever felt <i>right</i>, and That Person would always be there waiting, doing what great beings did like make wagers on universes and refining his attendants. That Person would give him attention and guidance whenever he came back, with a smile that felt like he understood Jose from the core in a way that even Jose didn't understand himself and that made Jose happy. Jose really, really liked That Person.</p><p>Once That Person rode on his head when Jose took the shape of the small boy, riding a bicycle down the trails of unconscious sleeping minds. That Person flapped his wings as they travelled together, peering into the little different worlds of each individual person.</p><p>"Why do you like humans so much, anyway?" Jose asked after they peered into a million dreams. He blinked up at That Person's large back. That Person laughed, attention never straying from the world he'd willingly tied himself to.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    <i>As we are whole, we are also aspects</i>
  </p>
</div>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    <i>Humanity is…</i>
  </p>
</div>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    <i>Perhaps it will be a disservice for me to tell you</i>
  </p>
</div>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    <i>Jose</i>
  </p>
</div>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    <i>Learn about humanity</i>
  </p>
</div>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    <i>Perhaps… thinking about who they are may even help you understand yourself</i>
  </p>
</div>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    <i>That can be your assignment</i>
  </p>
</div><p>That Person said, weaker now, retreating after he'd banished that other philosophy and kept him there.</p><p>Jose thinks the feeling that lurked near his sternum and likes heading towards his eyes is sadness when he drives back to That Person after travelling here and there and realises how soft that voice is now, compared to when he just met him. He is strong and infinite and complex while also being weak and alone, a single strand of thought that can snap any moment.</p><p>Jose extended his vision and looked up - beyond the gap between consciousness and unconsciousness to the Sea of Souls That Person liked to be near.</p><p>Then, beyond the Sea, is the ever-churning mass of humanity that Jose can feel even here, a constant press from billions exuding energy and chaos and wishes and desires and <i>turmoil</i> that could wash away Jose in an instant.</p><p>He looks at That Person, who has left all the gambling and wagers and fights behind for those he'd left behind, and Jose tilts his head. Pouts a little, in deep thought. Then he beams.</p><p>"Okay! I promise I'll finish your assignment," Jose says with a cheerful honk of his horn and wheels his car up and blasts straight through the cracks of reality that apparently no-one else can see, and slips through the Souls and right into this cognitive space another being already made. It's perfect for him to slowly unravel humanity's mysteries, empty except for these weak Shadows that know better than come close to him.</p><p>That is, until he meets His Chosen Ones.</p><p>Two, actually.</p><p>A Fool who is a blade inside, slowly being sharpened, and a Justice, whose soul is twisted and folded with care from another universe. They step in and burn bright, practically forcing Jose's attention as he turns and brought his attention, for that first time, through the cracks and wormholes of this Metaverse, through layers and layers and layers to sense them close and examine them, these Wildcards and Jose, well.</p><p>He can't help it. His car practically turns by itself.</p><p>He's so <i>curious.</i></p><p>Hmmm…</p><p>He needs another flower-helper anyway.</p><p><br/>
</p>
<hr/><p><br/>
</p><p>In another world, in another time, Akira Kurusu looks beyond the edge of his blue umbrella and sees the warped image of Goro Akechi standing on a pedestrian bridge. The silhouette looks down at the crowds passing underneath, hurrying to their destinations, wishing to get a reprieve from the downpour.</p><p>Akechi makes no effort to do so.</p><p>The rain makes the whole scene waver like an illusion, falling in sheets of grey watercolour that streaks the world in vague shadows and soft edges. Unconsciously, Akira changes direction and starts climbing the stairs. His footsteps make wet splashes that are swallowed by the patter of rain against his umbrella, the gush of water pouring down drowned gutters as he approaches the other boy, noting how that Akechi doesn't seem to mind or care that his summer uniform is soaked through or that his hair plastered to his scalp. There is no-one else in proximity to judge.</p><p>This is how Akira has his first look at his Justice's true face. Pausing on the last step, his eyes fix on the other's silhouette in the rain.</p><p>Akira has a revelation.</p><p>Pressed down from miles of stretching rain, Akechi looks upon the world with the coldness and disdain of an unfeeling arbiter judging an irredeemable sinner. He is close, but somehow immeasurably distant, and Akira realises that Goro Akechi does not care for anything he is seeing. Not the people hurrying past, the world beneath his feet. Akira blinks, tucking that strand of information in his heart as he climbs the final step, and with a few quick strides he's finally close enough to tilt half the umbrella over him.</p><p>"Hm? Oh, you were here, Akira?" A smile slides onto Akechi's face the moment he notices the lack of rain, his face exuding a false friendliness as he turns to greet Akira properly. Water droplets drip from the ends of his hair as his initial surprise grows more calculated by the second. Akira watches as Akechi draws up layers and layers of barriers, until his smile is perfect, his presentation immaculate. "As you can see, I forgot my umbrella. It seems our habit of bumping into one another is benefiting me today. Would you call this fate?"</p><p>Detective Prince Goro Akechi stands in front of him, brushing wet hair from his eyes in a motion almost stylised.</p><p>Akira tightens his grip on the umbrella.</p><p>"What were you doing here?"</p><p>"Here? I was… people-watching, as strange as that may sound." Akechi laughs. "Where were you heading?"</p><p>"Shinjuku," Akira replies, and Akechi acknowledges that with a small nod. They start walking towards the station together, down the stairs and passing by a community centre whose doors were open. Some politician with a familiar voice was speaking for his campaign to a crowd of people, spilling warm air and light onto a relatively chilly street. The politician's voice echoes onto the street for a moment before they pass and the sounds of traffic and rushing rain fill the silence again.</p><p>"What were you thinking?" Akira asks, and Akechi glances at him from the corner of his eye. As if judging him to see whether he was worthy of an answer.</p><p>Somehow, he is always worthy.</p><p>"…Hegel once said the history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom," Akechi replies. "I was merely reflecting on the nature of freedom in a society such as this."</p><p>Akira tilts his head in encouragement for Akechi to say more. Perhaps it is the rain pouring around them in sheets that has Akechi continue in that semi-honest tone.</p><p>"There is no doubt that the masses have a greater freedom than ever seen before in history," Akechi says. "In form we have overcome the reigns of monarchs, tyrants, and fallible regimes dictated by the sole ego of one man. Theory dictates that we even hold the power to dictate who we place in leadership. I was merely wondering, Akira," Akechi says with a smile, his mask so perfectly painted Akira sometimes wonders if he remembers how to take it off, "the point of it, when the masses are so easily swayed. There is no critical thought, no examination, just a constant echo chamber of general opinion."</p><p>Akechi's voice bleeds into a tinge of bitterness at the end. Akira walks alongside his Justice Arcana, readjusting his grip on his umbrella.</p><p>"…Do you think I'm one of them?"</p><p>Akira's question makes Akechi scoff at him in disbelief.</p><p>"The great leader of the Phantom Thieves himself, asking if he's one of the brainwashed masses?"</p><p>Knowing he nearly made the shining Second Coming of the Detective Prince roll his eyes makes Akira smirk a little.</p><p>"You might see our current freedom as fake," Akira replies lightly while weighing every word. It's a rare opportunity to talk about something so important to his Justice Confidant. The boy that he couldn't ever seem to reach despite him trying his best, "and that might be true. Our rebellion wouldn't exist if this society were perfect."</p><p>"Exactly," Akechi starts, but Akira shakes his head slightly.</p><p>"But to rebel is a freedom. The support we've gained from our rebellion is also their freedom. Don't judge individuals for the collective, Akechi." Akira twirls the umbrella over their heads a little, flinging raindrops off, "or we lose sight of important things."</p><p>When he looks to his companion again, Akira Kurusu has a second revelation that afternoon.</p><p>"You really are…" Goro Akechi trails off in one introspective, nearly fond murmur as those auburn eyes looked straight into him and saw something Akira didn't understand.</p><p>Goro Akechi, however reluctantly, however impossibly, seems to care something about <i>him.</i></p><p>And perhaps, judging by how he treats the rest of the thieves, his fans, the crowds, his cases…</p><p>Akira may be the only person he cares about.</p><p>Akira's first instinct is to think he's being too self-centred. There must be more in Goro Akechi's life than Akira himself that he cares for, but when Akira's mind races he can't think of any single person that he's seen Akechi with. No family or friends, no mentions of anything except cases, school, and introverted hobbies.</p><p>Masks, constant facades of lies and laughs, with everyone… Except Akira.</p><p>"Want to come with me?" Akira asks suddenly, his heart clenching. His left shoulder is starting to get wet, by how he's leant the umbrella more towards the other's side.</p><p>"What?" Akechi replies in confusion at the sudden change of topic, and Akira lets go of his own mask. He lets a wilder smile take its place, letting it be tinged with a bit of hopefulness as he nods.</p><p>"I'm not sure the friend I'm meeting in Shinjuku is there anyway. We can go somewhere interesting."</p><p>"In this weather?" Akechi replies, bemused, and Akira gives a shrug, tilting the umbrella back for them both, enough so that they could see how far up the sheets of rain stretched, clouds thick and low-bellied. Akira laughs alongside a roll of thunder, speaks in a flash of lightning.</p><p>"I don't see a problem. Do you?"</p><p>"Yes," Akechi deadpans, but Akira thinks the mood isn't bad. The cynical apathy he saw in Akechi before has alleviated a little and Akira is satisfied to see it. He's on the verge, Akira thinks, of getting Akechi to agree – to truly get to know his Justice Arcana without fate and plans and schemes for once, as he watches the thoughts brewing through the crease of his eyebrows, the tilt of his head as he, perhaps, recalled his schedule. Akechi switches his case from one hand to the other in preparation to reply.</p><p>Then Akechi's phone rings.</p><p>After checking the caller, he immediately picks up. His eyes are hard, when he speaks into it. "Yes… I understand. No, another assignment is fine, I'll have it finished by today."</p><p>Fate was always pushing them together enough to meet, but never enough to let them truly know one another. The energy underneath Akira's skin gradually settles down into disappointment when Akechi gives him a professional bow of apology.</p><p>"Maybe some other time," he promises after some other niceties before he rejects Akira's offer to keep the umbrella and walks out into the rain. His silhouette is washed away quickly in the deluge, and soon Goro Akechi is just yet another featureless shadow on the street</p><p>Years later, Akira waters his flowers. He speaks to them, sometimes, with the thoughts that he doesn't wish to share to their real counterparts. As their infallible support, he keeps his own fallibilities for his plants. They listen as they bloom and fade, of his thoughts and musings and worries on life, his friends. What they're doing, where he's going. Thoughts, sometimes, that turn to regrets.</p><p>To a certain pot of marigolds blooming golden in the corner, he'd ask.</p><p>"Were you reaching out to me back then? If you were, you could've made it easier, you know."</p><p>"When I think back, you really were one of a kind," Akira would muse another day, trimming them. "You'd be happy to hear that. Not gonna lie, you were kind of vain."</p><p>Then a whisper, one day when the marigolds wilted for the season and Akira prepared the plant for the next blooming.</p><p>"I wish we had met earlier too. We would've been great friends."

</p><p>Akira looks upwards and traces the universe.</p><p>"I know I could've saved you."</p><p><br/>
</p>
<hr/><p><br/>
</p><p>Ise Saito was born Ise Watanabe in the year of 1934 in a small countryside village into a family of four. Her father was a rice paddy farmer who, in those old and faded memories, had a smile like a half moon curve in a brown, sun-tanned face whenever he came back and threw her in the air to her happy laughs. Her mother would tut as she tied up the sleeves of her yukata to finish the household chores, older sister and brother helping her while she enjoyed the privileges of being the youngest and sat on her father's shoulders instead.</p><p>She'd kicked his chest with her heels as he walked her down the dirt street of their village, greeting aunties and uncles alike who were all congregating at the village centre after work to trade stories. </p><p>It was the growing age of urban economy, of old friends and family leaving for the promise of a better life in the large booming cities like Osaka and Tokyo. Ise would listen just like the other girls when old Yamamoto's granddaughter would come back with that city shine, in her long western skirts and sleeves close-cut to her arms, smile wide as she told stories of how many boys she had chasing her down in the office where she was a part-time secretary.</p><p>She had been too young to feel the unease that held the era of her childhood in its grip, and it was lucky in retrospect that she had ever only needed to use the bombing drills engrained in her from school twice. Sometimes, Ise still remembered the bombing planes, huddled with her mother and her sister with twenty others. Planes that were large hulking things with deep metallic droning roars that would swoop low over their village and deem them too unimportant, luckily, both times the alarm dropped.</p><p>The fighters targeted urban areas a lot more, and her mother was there for Old Yamamoto when he was read the telegram that told him of his granddaughter's death, who died from severe burns after being caught in a residential bombing attack. At sixty-six, he had been old enough to avoid conscription when the laws changed in 1943 to enlist all men over the age of 20.</p><p>Her father hadn't been.</p><p>Ise's last memory of her father was his cheerful white moon of a smile as he hugged her and her sister to his chest.</p><p>"I'll definitely write you a letter for your eleventh birthday, Ise!" He'd promised with a laugh, before promising the same to her sister for her thirteenth. He'd clapped a hand on her brother's shoulder – just turned sixteen then, growing broad and strong enough to help in the fields – before disappearing into the dawn.</p><p>When the conscription laws changed again a year later to allow anyone over fifteen to go to war, her mother had sobbed all night trying to persuade her brother not to go.</p><p>"I need to help, mama," was her brother's reply. "For Japan! For father! This is a duty that we must all bear!"</p><p>When, only a few months later, her brother returned a shell of himself carrying their father's late belongings, Ise realised one thing.</p><p>War takes. It takes and takes, and leaves nothing behind. Ise had cried with her sister, on a brother that was too numb to cry, and it was her mother who had taken the money that came with their father's sacrifice with a look of determination.</p><p>She moved them all to Tokyo.</p><p>There, Ise lost her brother to his mind, lost her sister to a faraway marriage, lost her mother due to complications to her health.</p><p>And when she was twenty-five and considered well on the shelf for marriageable age, Tomoya Saito came into her life.</p><p>A little solemn, a little serious. He preferred western clothing, a black blazer and pants that were too sombre for her liking. His hair was cut into a neat bowl cut that didn't flatter a face that was, admittedly, quite handsome, and he didn't seem to know how to laugh. He always spoke in soft, slow tones, and always listened to her rants about the state of social rights with a considering look on his face whenever they found each other during lunch break (and Ise didn't hate that, his considering attention). He worked for veteran affairs in a neighbouring building, and she could see him at his desk tapping away through the window, sometimes, when she took a break from her cases.</p><p>"Will you marry me?" Tomoya asked one day, out of the blue. "I think I like you, very much."</p><p>Ise slapped her forehead.</p><p>Tomoya was also <i>so stupid sometimes.</i></p><p>"You're a rich heir that'll inherit five buildings in the future, you know," Ise replied seriously. "I'm middle-aged by now. You should find someone younger, who suits your social class a little more."</p><p>"If I cared about that," Tomoya said with a small confused tilt of his head, "I wouldn't have found a job."</p><p>…That was true, Ise had to admit.</p><p>"Also, you aren't old. And you are beautiful, though what I like more… is how beautiful your mind is. You are someone that I wish to grow old with. I could see happiness in being able to see you every day."</p><p>"We already see each other every day," Ise replied dryly. "I rush back for lunch because of you, you know."</p><p>"But I would like to see you more," Tomoya replied, because he was <i>socially stunted</i> and never learnt the beautiful art of Japanese tact. "If not marriage, would you like a period of courtship?"</p><p>When they did, in fact, eventually get married, Ise Watanabe became Ise Saito, and Tomoya managed the first smile Ise had ever seen in her whole acquaintance with him.</p><p>She loved him, her silly, solemn man. She really did. He was the one who would talk Choei down whenever he judged too quickly, too harshly, was the one who unhesitatingly put all of his belongings and assets to <i>her</i> when she knew he was being pressured by other family members to share. He talked whenever she got angry or yelled, because he was her rock when she became a storm. In turn, he smiled more and more often, as they grew older.</p><p>The only time she ever saw him cry was when he was in hospital. There was an air about him – in the dragged skin on his cheeks, his frame. The light in his eyes, the weakness in his breath. Death was in the room, already cradling him in their arms.</p><p>"Don't worry about me, Tomoya," Ise had bent down and clasped his hand in hers. It was just another goodbye in a list of goodbyes, in a life full of them. Goodbyes were something that Ise was used to, by now. People, no matter how dear, came and went. "You rest easy now."</p><p>"I'm sorry, Ise," Tomoya said. A tear slid down the bridge of his nose. "I'm sorry for leaving you so early."</p><p>"Don't cry," Ise said, stroking his hand. So worn now, though not nearly as aged as she wished. "Worry about yourself, you silly man."</p><p>"Ise, I love you," Tomoya said. "We have discussed death enough for us to understand that we do not know what happens after it. But if it is possible, and I do not disappear, know that if I can I will be watching over you. And if I can't watch over you, I will be waiting for you. And if I can't wait for you—"</p><p>"Enough," Saito chuckled, pressing a kiss onto his hand. "Rest. Don't strain yourself too much. And… I love you too."</p><p>Tomoya ultimately died with that same solemn expression on his face, and Ise Saito had to continue on. Because it was life, Saito had long understood, to continue along. Even if she might not see a meaning, some days, without Tomoya there shuffling back indoors after getting the newspaper, with Choei not returning her calls, with Masako being slightly hesitant to let her stay over at her house.</p><p>And then.</p><p>And then…</p><p>She tries to breathe life into her daughter's lips, she orders Minoru to give her the gun and run upstairs and <i>hide</i>. She wipes it clean impatiently, before going back to Masako because she is still breathing even though her scalp is visibly indented, and Saito prays, and prays, and prays. She has never prayed so hard, for her daughter, her baby, her one and only sunshine child, to live.</p><p>God, please give her that much. Please let her daughter continue breathing, her last moments not a horrific moment of violence. Scared, threatened, alone, when her daughter deserved the world.</p><p>She is told Masako is dead through a phone call when she is still in a sterile police interrogation room. Saito couldn't be there to even hold Masako's hand when she breathed her last, and Saito finds herself placing flowers yet again, on another coffin. Placed next to Tomoya, with Hayao far, far away, and again, just like so many other times, she wishes her husband was there. He would surely tell her that she wasn't a failure, to send off their daughter first, before herself. He would surely hug her, pondering what to say, before slowly, surely, without any trace of tact, say, "It was that bastard's fault. Not yours."</p><p>But he is not there. A mother's duty is to protect, and she...</p><p>So Saito breathes, with these increasingly aged lungs that have outlasted so many. She helps. Helps and helps and helps, to those who can give her answers and assurances, to tell her what she already knows, deep in her heart. That somewhere, she thinks on her seventieth birthday, sitting alone in her house, cutting the small box of chocolate cake she made because Minoru had promised to come but never did. She thinks, taking out her own candles with resigned fingers and preparing to box it to give to the hospital, that if her son and grandson ignore her she shouldn't influence their choice. Everyone deals with grief and sadness and pain in their own way, and she shouldn't push them. Shouldn't shove in. She is a relic of their past, and that is alright.</p><p>Loneliness is an age-old ache, anyway. She's long used to it.</p><p>When Goro Akechi comes into her life, he looks like any other charismatic young man she's seen over the years. She is slightly unimpressed and saddened to see how their system is still lacking - the black-suited man is callous and dismissive, and the report had held many details that twinged Saito's heart with sympathy. An orphan, who finally, after reports of abuse and a hard-fought battle to prove his independence, was admitted emancipation.</p><p>Kind. Hard-working. Smart too, whenever she saw the news. A kid, just like all the others.</p><p>Then she finds him bloodied on her foyer sofas, hollow look in his eyes.</p><p>Saito understands that look. She's seen it before, so many times. In herself. In the people she loved. It is a look that wonders why the world is the way it is. A look worn only when one is alone and very, very tired.</p><p>There's no hesitation when she steps forward.</p><p>Helping is second nature. She can't ignore him – and when he talks, they're all questions on matters that she had asked herself a hundred times, a thousand times before. Forgiveness, in a world of unforgivable things. Of change, when the world never changes with you.</p><p>She doesn't know when she starts anticipating an extra set of cookies during the weekend, or when it became a natural to invite him over to her house whenever they met up. When Akechi greeted her with a smile and an offer to hold her bags for her when she headed to the hospital, or when he gave her that small flustered look whenever she pressed another gift into his hands. Or when Akechi was sitting on her porch drinking tea and poring over his homework, something a little cold in Saito's heart melted. Something that hadn't been touched since Masako died, so many years ago.</p><p>One day, laughing over his wry interpretation of a certain poem from class, Saito realises she doesn't feel lonely any more.</p><p>When Akechi's arm was steady underneath her weight as she leaned on it, trying not to huff too hard as they climbed the hill to Masako's, walking at a considerably slow pace. When Saito tells Akechi of her past and all he does is listen and lend a comforting presence when she cries, for once, not alone. When she is talking about birds and he's not dismissive, when she presses hot food into his hands and he's, unfailingly, surprised and pleased and flustered and laughs in a way that she wishes he always would - she makes a decision.</p><p>He is a lovely boy, no matter whatever he has heard over the years. And Saito wants to try again, a small selfish wish, to have a family to take care of. Protect properly, this time.</p><p>She places some important forms onto the table, slowly filling them in, squinting through thick glasses at her handwriting and checking each and every box that she filled in correctly—</p><p>
  <i>Thank you.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Thank you, Akechi-kun, for being here for this silly old woman.</i>
</p><p><br/>
</p>
<hr/><p><br/>
</p><p>"This is disgusting," Goro says, his head elegantly propped in one gloved hand, as he sat in the bright plastic diner of Big Bang Burger and watched Akira eating through an entire mountain of burger in front of him. Just watching Akira made him not want to touch the <i>normal</i>-sized burger that he bought. "What's even in that thing?"</p><p>"A whole head of lettuce, apparently," Morgana replies with similar combined look of disgust and awe.</p><p>While Akira determinedly attacked the burger and didn't talk in an effort to finish the huge tower of burger that's frankly, Akechi absent-mindedly calculated in his brain, at least fifty times larger than the average human stomach, Akechi reached out and flipped open the burger from the other side a little.</p><p>"…You weren't joking," he informed Morgana, who nodded.</p><p>"I've seen Joker try this challenge like, three times," Morgana replied. "Each time I even lose my appetite to eat fatty tuna!"</p><p>"My sincere condolences," Akechi says as his eyes go back to watching Akira munching away. "Really, when you said you liked eating, I wouldn't have imagined such… extremity. Figures that you would exceed my expectations in every way."</p><p>Akira gave him the benefit of a one second smirk, before diving back in.</p><p>Half an hour later, Akira had practically face-planted into his half-eaten burger. Morgana sighs and rolled his eyes and mentioned something about guts, while Akechi tucked his untouched burger back into his case and snaps it shut.</p><p>"Come on, you ridiculous idiot," Akechi says without heat as he hauls Akira onto his shoulder. "Let's get you back home. And don't you dare try to speak when I think you're going to vomit the moment you open your mouth."</p><p>"Don't underestimate… <i>Urmph.</i>"</p><p>Akira clutched a hand to his mouth when Akechi <i>accidentally</i> jostles him a little as they manoeuvre out of the booth. Akira shoots him a dirty look while Morgana laughs, and Akechi ignores the both of them with a polite refreshing smile on his face, nodding to the lady behind the counter who hides a smile behind a hand.</p><p>"That was dirty," Akira mutters when his stomach settles, and Akechi tilts his head, face set in that polite smile.</p><p>"Oh? And when did I ever claim to fight clean?"</p><p>"Touché," Akira replies, a laugh hidden behind his voice despite the fact that his Akira-mask was back on. "I'll try that again in a month. I think I can do it."</p><p>"What, after stomach-expansion surgery?" Akechi replies dryly. "Next time I won't be there to drag you back to LeBlanc. I only came today because I was unaware that you regularly inflict yourself with such self-harm. Are you secretly a masochist, Akira?"</p><p>"You'd be the first to know," Akira promises, a smirk finally breaking through the general solemnity. "My greatest rival would need to know a weakness like that, but it'll be quid pro quo. You have to give me something too."</p><p>"I can simply deduce such a simple matter such as that," Akechi replies airily. "No bargaining required." They were near Shibuya Crossing now, and Akira watches it with a distant look in his eyes. The people crossing in hordes, the rumbling of waiting cars as lights blinked and flashed.</p><p>"Akechi, you'll still be here, right?" Akira asks, and Akechi tilts his head with a smile that never changes.</p><p>"Of course I am, Akira."</p><p>"And we're friends, right?"</p><p>"You are the only person I truly care about," Akechi replies too easily, and in Akira's eyes he sees another Akechi frozen in time. Of one, who demanded him to choose – the world, or the person in front of him.</p><p>How had Akechi never picked up, with all his smarts?</p><p>Akira had always, always chosen to help the people he saw in front of him who needed help, regardless of the cost.</p><p>"Right," Akira says, and Akechi laughs.</p><p>"We can have another game of chess while you finish digesting," Akechi suggests, and he looks so free. Unburdened by a past that had limited the man that Akira had always knew Akechi could have become.</p><p>And Akira loves, and knows he loves a ghost.</p><p>"Sure," Akira gives a smirk. "This time I'll win though."</p><p>"Oh dear," Akechi murmurs. "It seems like you also have a case of food poisoning, Akira, to believe such delusions."</p><p>"It's okay to be delusional sometimes," Akira says, leaning a little heavier on Akechi, who takes it with a sound of small complaint. "Reality's boring, otherwise."</p><p>Akechi laughs. His eyes are always a shade too knowing.</p><p>"Perhaps."</p><p><br/>
</p>
<hr/><p><br/>
</p><p>During a wedding reception, Maruki watches as Rumi and her new husband waves from the podium where they just exchanged rings and kissed. As the crowd around him cheered and laughed and cried, Maruki stands still as he watches Rumi's face – so beautiful when she was smiling – beam as she heaves her bouquet into the air.</p><p>With a little tweak of reality, the bouquet of roses lands in Maruki's hands. With that, everyone's eyes land on him, as he holds these pink roses in his hands.</p><p>Including Rumi.</p><p>Maruki had made sure to give her the dream wedding she had always gushed about. Every single detail she had ever told him – a vaulting church, a sunny day. Pink on white on gold, and a wedding dress with a train that stretched extravagantly for a metre that she'd have to change out of for her reception. He sees her future in his mind, etched out with meticulous detail and care – she will have her two children, one boy, one girl. Her husband will have his free dreams and career and personality, of course, but would only ever be loyal and dedicated to Rumi as she deserved.</p><p>She will see no violence, no pain. She will have no cause to be unhappy ever again. Maruki will make sure of it.</p><p>"Wow, you caught it!" Rumi laughs. "Give a hand up to…" Maruki sends his own name into her mind for a second. "Maruki!"</p><p>That voice, calling his name.</p><p>He doesn't think his heart is shattering when he stops time for a little. Rumi won't notice, as Maruki gently slides past the crowds of people, laughing and cheering, and places the bouquet back into Rumi's hands. Her hands are covered in delicate lace gloves, and the frozen beams of golden sunlight light up her brown hair in the way that he had always called beautiful, and she boring.</p><p>Happy. Her happiness. That is all that matters.</p><p>When he steps a little closer, standing on the red carpet next to her, looking over the crowds that held Rumi's family – her dead mother and father who he had long called 'mom' and 'dad' – he can imagine that this was his own special day.</p><p>Outside, there is a limousine that's in his favourite shade of blue, at Rumi's insistence in this world. Rumi, who didn't like blue. Who themed her whole marriage around gentle pink roses, and Maruki asks one, single question.</p><p>"Am I doing the right thing, Rumi?"</p><p>Rumi's frozen face doesn't answer. She is eternal this way – alive, laughing, and a world where she is capable of doing both is definitely right.</p><p>Maruki gently kisses her on the forehead in farewell and rewinds time until everyone still anticipates Rumi throwing the bouquet into the crowd.</p><p>"Thank you for solidifying my resolve, Rumi," Maruki says, taking a step back. He can't tear his eyes away, for some reason, from Rumi dressed so beautifully, at her perfect, dream wedding.</p><p><i>"And you'll be wearing a pink suit!"</i> Rumi laughs, kicking her legs as she grins from where she's plopped herself onto their bed. Her shirt has ridden up slightly, a flimsy one even though it's winter, and Maruki gets up to get a blanket to cover her with. <i>"Maruki, stop being such a nanny! I'm fineee."</i></p><p>"You're always the one helping me," Maruki says as he tips his hat back over his head. "Be happy, Rumi."</p><p>The next moment the church snaps into motion, and Rumi blinks at the weight of the bouquet in her arms in confusion before the blip is quickly washed away.</p><p>"Ready?" She grins, not knowing why she wanted to cry. She throws the bouquet into the crowd before bursting into laughter when her mother caught it. "Mom, ahaha, are you going to marry dad again?"</p><p>And Maruki seats himself in the depths of Mementos on his throne.</p><p>It is cold. It is dark.</p><p>"Perhaps… this is also a form of repentance," Maruki says as he slowly closes his eyes. Azathoth rumbles in his mind, and Maruki smiles. "No, it's fine, Azathoth. I am… happy to see everyone happy. That is all I need."</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>yo! here i promised these 2 weeks ago when marigolds hit 3000 kudos and then i was like HAHA YOU THOUGHT IT WOULD BE ON TIME BUT IT AINT.<br/>I tried to write fluff guys, because a dear reader asked me for no angst and I tried but somehow a bit of emo slipped in (imsorrycough). I hope that these glimpses into jose saito and akira/akechi/maruki are interesting.<br/>The first one is in the original P5 universe before Marigolds happened, and before Akechi died.<br/>The last two... I'll let you guys make your own conclusions. They're just concepts now though, and may be subject to change :3<br/>Thank you so much for your support guys! 3000!!!!! NANIII. I'm hehe, happy. I told myself it won't be a milestone thing and i doubt marigolds will get to 4000 anytime soon, so the next thought for this side-fic will probably be after Fusa's rank 10 :D I have high excitement for that. I'll edit this a little later, haha. I'll see you in the next marigolds update!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>*kamoshida warning</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The earliest memory Yusuke has is of large, calloused hands grasping his own. They’re not the worn, rough sort of calloused that he has observed in the many people who worked in trades, with big flat, worn pads set in thick and roughened skin. They were calloused in the way of an artist – callouses that were in very specific places, set in hands that were soft and wrinkled and well-taken care of.</p><p>Those hands were leading him forward, their walking pace just on the side of a little-too-quick for someone young, and a little-too-slow for an adult. Winding down streets through the sprinkling rain without too much hurry because there was a clear plastic umbrella covering them both. Droplets caught Yusuke on the face, a strange splash of cold that sometimes made him flinch a little before allowing his eyes to look straight back upwards to see the shining droplets slide down the umbrella in slow motion. Quick motion, when they reached a certain point on the umbrella. Gravity, pulling them down until they did a tiny, tiny splash and got swallowed up by puddles greater than them so they became one very, very large droplet.</p><p>He had gotten distracted a couple of times, feet lagging when he saw something interesting. A beautiful green leaf floating perfectly on the water without drowning, without spinning in the wind at all. A dark grey cloud, past the clear umbrella, whisking away to reveal a second layer of lighter, more silvery clouds behind, so thin that he could see the shadow of the sun shining down against it on the other side. A passing woman, whose tie-dye bag was a clashing mix of colours that melted into one another in a pure chaos that somehow worked, the streaked design dripping with water, caught Yusuke’s unwavering attention as she passed.</p><p>“Come on, Yusuke,” his Sensei said every single time his feet wanted to pause. To stop, crouch, chase, follow when the world gave him such beautiful shapes and colours and things to see. “We can’t be late now.”</p><p>And every single time Yusuke would hurry his steps a little to follow where that warm hand was grasping.</p><p>He doesn’t remember where they were going. It was just that moment, that warm voice and that steady, reassuring hand.  He does remember curling up back home at the run-down atelier – back then already a little aging, but still much more serviceable than what it had become – into a kotatsu that had been set against the sudden cold and humidity brought by the rain.</p><p>Fujihara-san, Madarame-sensei’s first apprentice, was always that sort of caring individual. He was a quiet boy who knew how to cook and clean better than Madarame and gladly took on the duties when Madarame handed them over to him.</p><p>Yusuke remembers feeling very small, standing on a stool next to Fujihara-san as he rinsed the dishes and placed them on the dish rack, Fujihara-san doing most of the soaping and the scrubbing and the squeaky-checks to see if there was any oil left. His fellow apprentice had a taller than average build and had always been grateful to Madarame-sensei for taking him in.</p><p>“He was very kind to take me in and sponsor my art schooling when he noticed that I’d fallen into difficulty because my mother stopped financially supporting me,” Fujihara-san said gently as he let Yusuke dump globs of gesso onto his canvas to prepare for his next oil painting. Yusuke watched as Fujihara-san smoothed it out, made it perfect. Yusuke loved Fujihara-san’s oil paintings because they were always so vivid. Colourful and bold, gentle and muted, whatever Fujihara had in his mind. “Just like how he took you in, Yusuke-kun. There’s rarely someone as generous as Madarame-sensei.”</p><p>Yusuke had finger-painted a bird onto Fujihara-san’s calf while his fellow apprentice had concentrated on another work-in-progress. A multi-storied house, covered in vines and run down. Various bright birds peaked out from the windows, flying into the sky, and Fujihara-san was finishing off his slight visual illusion to make the house itself look like a bird’s head. After he’d finished the shadows of the flying birds on the ground, Fujihara-san had joined him and they’d painted his whole calf blue and white and grey and pink, because why not, Yusuke had pouted and Fujihara-san had caved.</p><p>Fujihara-san was not his <em>brother, </em>Yusuke knows, because Sensei hated it when they referred to each other with so much informality at his studio. Just like how Sensei hated being called <em>father</em> and insisted on ‘sensei’, and everyone respected that.</p><p>Yusuke never thought too much about it.</p><p>Yusuke, to his own anger and disappointment at <em>himself</em>, never thought too much about many important things until it was too late.</p><p>It was a year later that they had another member in the atelier. Yoshimi-san fell into hard times after his parents became unemployed, and Madarame-sensei let him live in the atelier because he was too talented to ‘let it go to waste’. Endo-san ran away from home and got disowned, and similarly stayed because Madarame-sensei had given him that warm smile.</p><p>Yusuke, the youngest of all of them. The five of them, happy, Yusuke thought sincerely, to the laughter of his fellow apprentices as he spaced out over dinner yet again. When Yoshimi-san patiently listened to Yusuke as he babbled on and on and on and on about crustaceans (because the shells were so cool), Endo-san bonking him on the head whenever Yusuke treated his brushes carelessly. Fujihara-san, a big, smiling shadow in the kitchen, in his room, painting and cooking and drawing, secretly greeting him with ‘<em>otouto’.</em></p><p>And Madarame-sensei, the reason why they had all of this at all. He smelled like autumn leaves and laundry powder, Yusuke had once thought when he fell asleep against his Sensei’s coat. Fraying at the edges because Madarame-sensei’s collection was rejected from exhibition again even though the paintings were obviously amazing and they were running a little low on food (Yusuke learnt quickly that drinking lots of water helped with the gnawing hunger. Fujihara-san would always sneak him extra portions anyway and had stolen a sprig of mint to grow in their back yard. Mint-leaf water was… a nostalgic taste). Madarame-sensei, as he hugged Yusuke close and told him everything was going to be alright.</p><p><em>Father</em>, Yusuke thought.</p><p>“Sensei,” Yusuke said, as he showed off his painting to Madarame and he’d looked at Yusuke with a surprised gleam in his eyes. Pride, Yusuke thought happily when Madarame’s hand landed heavily on his shoulder and Madarame had said that Yusuke had <em>potential</em>.</p><p>Still not a family. Never a family, even though Yusuke could always count on Fujihara-san leaving out whatever snacks they could scrounge up on their small communal table in the living room when he came back from school. Endo-san, adjusting his glasses as he sat Yusuke down severely and schooled him on his math homework (boring, until Endo-san had given him a <em>look</em> and described the visual beauty in math. The numbers, translated, and Yusuke, Yusuke was <em>hooked</em>. He’d studied and drawn like mad, he drew the Fibonacci sequence in all of his art for the next few months and Endo had rolled his eyes hiding his smile). Yoshimi-san, bright-faced and bright-laughing, always teasing Yusuke for not understanding others but always fiercely protective if anyone else tried to tease Yusuke the same way.</p><p>When had it gone wrong?</p><p>Yusuke never knew.  Yusuke doesn’t know.</p><p>He’s not good at these things. Shapes, angles. The sunflower, in exactly the shade of #FDB813, but to be mixed with something a little brighter, perhaps even complimented by a shift of light green to enhance the warmth. He’s good at seeing the world in perspective. Drawing the world into metaphorical shape underneath whatever implements he holds.</p><p> People… People were baffling.</p><p>Was it when Madarame-sensei started bringing in more and more children and youth to live with him as apprentices?</p><p>Was it when Madarame-sensei had tearfully, shamefully, begged Fujihara-san to let him take three, just three, of his paintings to sell in his own name for their living costs when the heating cut off in the middle of winter? When was it the exhibit was filled with ink works from Endo-san, who had smashed his inkstone in anger before crying over the regret of it? When had Yoshimi-san started to sculpt mutated beasts that could never be released under Madarame-sensei’s name?</p><p>Yusuke… Didn’t understand at first. That pain. Madarame-sensei never took any of the money himself. He’d always splurged it all back onto <em>them</em>. Blankets, when he could, or clothes. But mostly art supplies. Paints, brushes, canvases, pencils, watercolours, inks, racked in the hundreds for <em>their</em> sake. For one day letting their art be known because they were so talented.  Madarame-sensei had taken the first painting he’d been proud of and stamped his own ink-seal onto it, before hugging Yusuke and saying ‘<em>thank you. Thank you for helping this useless old man</em>’ and Madarame, Sensei, <em>father, </em>he couldn’t be useless. Never.</p><p>It was everyone else that was stupid.</p><p>(One day, Endo-san had exploded at Madarame and left. He’d shook Yoshimi-san, yelling at him in the kitchen and Yusuke had stared and stared and heard nothing of what they’d been talking about because he was scared inside, at that shaking <em>desperation </em>in Endo’s eyes.)</p><p>(One day, after another day where Fujihara-san once again painted another dark forest, another yawning hole, another sad river. One day, Yusuke came home and only realised Fujihara-san had committed suicide when the news splashed over his phone.)</p><p>(One day, Yoshimi-san had hugged Yusuke and told him he’d be back, he’ll take Yusuke away if he could, and left in the depths of the night with a light in his eyes and whatever small sculptures and art he could carry in his bag.)</p><p>One day, Yusuke realised that this… this was pain.</p><p>It was wrong.</p><p>“You won’t leave me right, Yusuke?” Madarame-sensei had asked at Fujihara-san’s funeral, tears streaking down his face, his whole body bowed in grief. Yusuke had resisted twisting his fingers into Sensei’s black haori, well-made because they’d specially bought them for Fujihara-san.  “You’d never leave me right?”</p><p>Yusuke had looked at his sensei and saw the man who painted the gentle beauty of the Sayuri.</p><p>Yusuke didn’t understand people. Not that well, in their tones, their expressions. It was hard and difficult, and it changed every day.</p><p>But he did understand paintings.</p><p>“Yes, Sensei,” Yusuke had replied, dipping his hands into his haori’s sleeves and his fingers twisted into his own shirt sleeves, pulled tight. He wanted to cry, but he thinks for some reason that day he didn’t know how. Fujihara-san, who he’d never meet again… The concept still felt unreal. Like Fujihara-san was still at home, painting his sad paintings alone. “Of course I’d never leave you.”</p><p>“Good, that’s good,” Madarame said absentmindedly, wiping his eyes as he looked? Glared? At the media that had surrounded this funeral. “Let me take care of the press, Yusuke. You don’t need to deal with all of this… publicity nonsense. Go home first.”</p><p>Somewhere in the back of his mind, floating, Yusuke noted that Madarame-sensei grew infinitely more famous after his tear-filled speech outside Fujihara’s funeral. It floated disconnected from how he noticed some of his fellow apprentices – never as close as his original family – disappearing whenever they left the atelier. It didn’t connect to the fact that he only ever heard about Endo-san and Yoshimi-san from Madarame’s updates and mouth.</p><p>Yusuke never really thought in those ways until it’s blatantly obvious.</p><p>And later, as always too late, he realises Madarame had known that all along.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>When Naoto went to Oxford to do her university studies with scholarship, Yu has to admit that the average IQ of the group dropped by ten. Weekly catch-ups on their week usually has Naoto staring at them through the screen with one of her most unimpressed looks on her face, half disbelieving and half exasperated as she gradually descends from sitting straight and polite to cradling her forehead in one hand.</p><p>“How do you all get into these situations?” Naoto would say in a way that held all the tones of a friend who wondered <em>why, </em>exactly, they continued investing so much care and time in their more microbial-level peers.</p><p>Yu would agree with her if</p>
<ol>
<li>He wasn’t the instigator of approximately 60% (modest estimate) of these incidents</li>
</ol><p>And</p>
<ol>
<li>If the wind hadn’t changed when he was a child and set his face into an expression of permanent emotional constipation, face in forever paralysis, demeanour always cool.</li>
<li>Please believe him, it’s true</li>
</ol><p>“Another Metaverse incident and I’m still in the middle of my semester,” Naoto sighs this time, still relatively sane. She’s placed her face too close to her laptop as usual, still awkward on camera, but every single IT member appreciated how she tried. “I’m concerned about all of you.”</p><p>“Don’t be!” Chie laughs, waving Naoto’s frown off. Although she has her camera off, she’s obviously eating something, ravenous after her police academy training. “We haven’t even found anything yet and it doesn’t seem dangerous at all!”</p><p>“Yeah,” Yukiko replies, her camera showing one of the fancier rooms at Amagi Inn. She’s in a full kimono after greeting a guest. “No murders or anything, Naoto.”</p><p>“Don’t worry ‘bout us,” Kanji mutters somewhere into his shoulder, adjusting his glasses as he tried to distract himself from the vision of Naoto with her hair pulled back into a ponytail. It’s unfortunate that Rise had a photoshoot in the mountains for the week – the reception wasn’t good enough to sustain a call.</p><p>“The guy is just a really slippery bastard that’s all,” Yosuke sighs to fill the silence. “Since we don’t have any updates, uh… Wanna hear about what happened in my music theory class? My seatmate did it again,” he started, before chattering on about his insane seatmate (<em>‘he keeps ten cartons of straws in his bag! Why?’) </em>and a new technique he’s mastered at the turntables.</p><p>Yu stays silent and enters the conversation only at important points of the conversation. For example, of course, it’s relevant to mention that one time when Yosuke walked into a gay bar at Shinjuku and accidentally agreed to a makeover and found that advanced drag techniques transformed him into a beautiful enough woman that five guys hit on him in the short walk down the street to find some new clothing without lipstick stains.</p><p>“His sexuality was very challenged,” Yu finishes off, adjusting his reading glasses. Yosuke had already given up on trying to stop him from his little box of a camera, apparently lying like a dead fish on the floor. “But I have been trying to tell him that I am concerned as a best friend because denial isn’t healthy in maintaining decent mental health.”</p><p>Yosuke groans, and mumbles something intelligible that sounded very unflattering.</p><p>“I’m hurt, dear partner,” Yu says.</p><p>“No, you’re not! You said you’d forget it, you traitor!” Yosuke explodes, and Yu looks straight at the camera.</p><p>“Partner, how could I ever forget you?”</p><p>“Speaking of which, how is that hacker that Mitsuru-san hooked you guys to?” Naoto interrupts, knowing that if she didn’t Yu had the juice to keep going for days.</p><p>“The bona fide fifty-year-old macho black man with eight-pack abs will like to remind all of you guys to keep searching according to schedule,” Yu replies. “He also recommended me some doujinshi about University AU Featherman where they’re all magically twenty and no-one is dead and it’s surprisingly good. The art is cute. They draw realistic cats. I uploaded it to the group chat.”</p><p>“It’s unfortunate that there are no new updates,” Naoto shakes her head. “If only I was there, I’m sure I can help.”</p><p>“You’ll be coming back to Japan during summer break, right?” Chie interrupts with excitement. She’s finally switched her camera back on, patting her stomach in satisfaction with three large empty beef bowls placed right next to her keyboard. “That’s only a few months away! We can investigate stuff and plan something fun!”</p><p>“That’s a great idea, Chie,” Yukiko immediately nods, elegantly brushing long strands of hair behind her ear. There’s a delicate butterfly clip she’s placed in her hair instead of her headband, and she pats it to check if it’s still in place before going into a thinking pose. “Hmm… Do you want us to go to Tokyo, or you guys come back to Inaba?”</p><p>“Man, Tokyo has so much more stuff to do!” Yosuke shoots up from where he’d slumped over his keyboard. “Come here, guys. The moment I step back into Inaba dad will drag me straight back to working shifts at Junes again!”</p><p>“We have the beach, really cool shopping centres…” Chie counts off her fingers, before lighting up. “And didn’t Nanako-chan really like Destinyland last time?”</p><p>“Yeah, let’s go there again!” Yukiko claps. “I’ll text Rise, wait a second…”</p><p>“I haven’t been to an amusement park for a long time,” Naoto concedes with a nod and a small, serious smile. “Though I would appreciate it if you would leave more time to investigate as well.”</p><p>“Of course,” Yu replies with a simple nod. “Tell us when you’re flying and we’ll meet you at the airport.”</p><p>“You really don’t have to,” Naoto starts to reply before being immediately cut off.</p><p>“Of course we do!” Kanji insists loudly, blasting everyone with headphones. “We’re all looking forward to being a group again, ‘kay?”</p><p>“Thank you, Kanji-kun. I have to leave for my next class now. See you all next week,” Naoto gives them all a professional nod to Chie’s disappointed <em>aww</em> of disappointment. It was getting rather late anyway, and the rest of the IT slowly log off the chat as they’re pulled off to other duties.</p><p>Yu is, as always, the last one off. He stares at himself – the only face on the screen – and slowly reaches out to touch the screen. His fingers don't go through.  The Television world is still linked to Inaba, and the Dark Hour hasn’t reoccurred. Cognitive Psience, Alibaba, and the pervading sense of weight in the air…</p><p>Yu still counted his year in Inaba the best in his life. Meeting the IT, Igor and Margaret, Personas and the Television World and meeting all of his precious friends was irreplaceable. Finding family in Dojima and Nanako who taught him that he didn’t need to be perfect, didn’t have to meet everyone else’s expectations to be loved was a warm weight in his heart every single time he called back to check on them. Hunting down the serial murder, facing Izanami… Yu had undoubtedly become stronger. Everyone had.</p><p>But looking back, they had been a group of teenagers. They had juggled saving victims of the Midnight Channel with exams, school and petty dramas. Dojima’s stress was suddenly understandable when he thought about another group of teenagers running around dealing with a problem so great even the mighty researchers of Kirijo couldn’t pin down.</p><p>Having tagged along with Yosuke to some Shadow Ops activities, he had spoken with the agent called Aigis. A robot, she had explained with gentleness he rarely saw from people, but she thought too much all the same.</p><p>Aigis had wondered about the role of a Wildcard. The use of it and its miracles when they had reached The World. The final terminus – the purpose.</p><p>Yu had replied, without hesitation, that one’s role in the world was created by themselves.</p><p>“Yes, I agree,” Aigis had said with a smile that was slightly sad. Her blonde hair shifted as she looked away from him to look at the bright sky above them. “We all walk our own paths, our own destinies fuelled by our decisions and convictions… I will also never give up. If there is such a thing as fate, I will crush it to make the future I want.”</p><p>Yu thinks of her strong conviction and hums in pensive thought before a <em>meow</em> breaks through his thoughts.</p><p>“No, Cali. You’ve already eaten your dinner.”</p><p>
  <em>Meow!</em>
</p><p>“…Alright. Just one more.”</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Shiho had always been the type to be funny without meaning to. She’d hang out with a bunch of other girls who just kind of sat together in the playground because they sat together in class talking about the same old things all day. Shiho would let her mind wander and catch onto something – like, for example, imagining whether the feathers on that pigeon would make a good crown with how peacock-shiny it was in the sunlight – before suddenly the whole group was laughing.</p><p><em>“A peacock out of a pigeon!” </em>Shiho remembers this one, as she laughed with them when she caught onto why they thought it was funny. “<em>You always think the strangest things, Suzui-chan!”</em></p><p>Not that she really cared that she didn’t really have a brain to mouth filter. It was kind of something that she couldn’t help really, because her mouth catches up to her thoughts before her brain did, like, get what she means? It’s not her fault that the circuit between her thoughts and mouth was faster than her thoughts and self-control!</p><p>Well, it netted her the best friend in the world so she didn’t really mind.</p><p>Ann was <em>amazing</em>. Somehow, no matter how Shiho felt it was kind of strange that Ann lived in her big house all alone while her parents were gallivanting in fashion shows all around the world, Ann never really minded. She’d shrug it off, genuinely not caring as they ate gelato together walking down the streets of Shibuya, Ann peering into different clothing stores with a curiosity and knowledge Shiho would never be able to match.</p><p>“They still love me, but I told them I’d rather stay put in one place than move everywhere with them so it’s really just them listening to my preferences,” Ann said.</p><p>“I don’t know, I don’t know what I’d do without my mom and dad,” Shiho mused through a mouthful of pistachio gelato. “My mom babies me still, so I don’t really do chores around the house, or cook, or clean, or… Wow, I’m a slob,” Shiho said with an air of honest surprise.</p><p>Ann rolled her eyes.</p><p>“No you aren’t, you’re just being normal. My mom did that too whenever she had the time. I just do it myself now, and they hired a housekeeper to help me anyway.”</p><p>Shiho had hummed with squinted eyes of suspicion but dropped it. Ann wasn’t lying, Shiho sensed. Ann didn’t really have one deceptive bone in her body. The moment she was sad or depressed, everyone just <em>felt </em>it. It’d be on her face, her voice, the way her hair was way too perfect, and Ann truly didn’t care her parents prioritised their career over her.</p><p>That’s fine.</p><p>While Shiho was good at maths, biology and nothing else, Ann was good at English and nothing else, and together they pulled a pass over enough subjects that Shiho could continue Volleyball club without stopping for supplementary lessons. She’d play games, knowing that she’d see Ann cheering on the sidelines when they had a competitive game.</p><p>Shiho loved that burn in her muscles after a good jump, the feel of her hand against the plastic of the volleyball as it hit <em>just right. </em>The bounce of it as she slammed her arm down, spike perfectly curving around the blockers to land inside the line and she’d cheered and jumped and laughed and hugged all her teammates after a win with oxygen trying to tear itself out of her lungs and her palms red from a game. Using her body had always felt <em>good, </em>knowing it inside out as she went out on a morning jog and ran around the block with the morning chill stinging her lips, the inside of her nose as she sucked in, the panting breaths she let out in puffy white clouds billowing out that, Shiho giggled when she stopped for a water break, made her think of these rare cloud formations called mammatus clouds cos <em>hehe</em> pouches, <em>sky pouches</em>.</p><p>Thoughts aside, they’d both been so excited to go into Shujin.</p><p>Shiho had watched Suguru Kamoshida when he’d been in the Olympics with the rest of Japan. The team he’d been in had been the best in years, and Japan had proudly announced another gold in all the newspapers on that day.</p><p>Their middle school volleyball team had pasted the team’s pictures on their club’s corkboard, and Shiho had discussed with everyone else their winning play until they got sick of it, three days later. Shiho had been on the moon the first week, checking out the gymnasium, wearing her new uniform (Shujin’s uniform was cute in her eyes, okay?) when she noticed Ann tugging her jacket closer over her body when they passed the courtyard.</p><p>“Ann, what’s wrong?” Shiho asked, looping a hand through her friend’s arm, and Ann glanced to the side before shaking her head.</p><p>“Nothing, Shiho! Let’s go, isn’t there that new special out in that crepe store the other day?” Ann grinned, and Shiho…</p><p>She looked at where Ann glanced at and only saw Kamoshida-sensei doing his usual rounds around the school. He was actually telling off a fellow volleyball club member… Mishima? Over something he dropped on the ground, and Shiho looked back at Ann, confused.</p><p>“Nothing,” Ann insisted, smile still the same, her voice too terse, and Shiho always, <em>always</em>, knew when her best friend was lying.</p><p>So she watched.</p><p>Ann, wearing red tights instead of showing her legs.</p><p>Ann, preferring long-sleeves even though she was gushing at a cute catalogue of summer clothing the other day, with short skirts and shirts that were sleeveless.</p><p>Ann, uncomfortable as walked just a little too quickly in the hallways, head down like Ann never, ever did.</p><p>Ann’s beautiful blue eyes looking lost and stressed as she tried to step away from Kamoshida-sensei, who had invited her to a drive to the station.</p><p>Her focus shifted.</p><p>Kamoshida-sensei, whose eyes always followed Ann whenever they were near her.</p><p>Kamoshida-sensei, who would always move in a direction that would corner Ann if Shiho wasn’t there to pull her away because she ‘suddenly forgot something in the classroom!’</p><p>Kamoshida-sensei, who would overhear her and give her an annoyed look that wouldn’t even last a second (but Shiho, Shiho was always great at reading people, and Ann is bright, bright like a sun, a star, who’d cheer her up whenever Shiho got bad marks by proudly showing her own marks which were always worse, who always had a smile and an ear and thirty minutes to chat when she needed it) and Shiho…</p><p>“That’s stupid,” Shiho blurted out one day at volleyball practice, when Kamoshida sent the boys to do stupid push-up drills non-stop again that did nothing for their volleyball technique.</p><p>Maybe it was her mouth speaking before her thoughts really formed again.</p><p>Maybe it was her <em>sheer anger</em>.</p><p>“What did you say?” Kamoshida said, smile wide on his thick lips, his strong, structured jaw, and it was only when he loomed closer did Shiho realise just how <em>large</em> Kamoshida was. So tall. Shiho refused to step back, just glared back at him, and Kamoshida’s eyes had a victorious glint as if he recognised her even though he hadn’t remembered <em>any</em> of their names five weeks into the year.</p><p>That was the moment his focus, Shiho realised, shifted onto <em>her.</em></p><p>Later on in his office, Kamoshida had sat with a knowing smirk on his face.</p><p>“And what did you want to say to me,” Kamoshida drawled, leaning back on his chair like he was the king, splayed out and indolent as he played with a pen in his hand, and Shiho had drawn herself up.</p><p>“Your volleyball training for the boys doesn’t make sense,” Shiho started, and Kamoshida rolled his eyes.</p><p>“And you think you know more than an Olympic athlete… why? Students should just know how to listen to their teachers,” Kamoshida had tutted, and Shiho bit her lip. “You’re a good girl… Uh. You’re Takamaki’s friend right?”</p><p>“My name is Shiho Suzui,” Shiho bit out, straightening her shoulders and Kamoshida’s eyes had immediately looked at her chest in a way that made Shiho immediately want to curl up. She was still in her sports clothes, and they’d worked out enough that the white was slightly transparent. “And aren’t you a teacher? Don’t do that.”</p><p>“Right, right. Suzui, eh. Do what, exactly?” Kamoshida mocked, eyes lingering before he finally looked at her face. “Your friend, Takamaki. She’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. What if I just got you suspended for a few days for badmouthing a teacher and called her to my office? Class time, of course. My office is pretty secluded, wouldn’t you say?”</p><p>Shiho pursed her lips. “What are you insinuating?”</p><p>“I’m saying,” Kamoshida rolled his eyes with a groan, “that I’m a teacher. An <em>Olympian</em>. Shujin wouldn’t be half of what it is without me. You should stop yapping your lips and start listening to me, and maybe I’ll forget your insolence today and not do anything to your friend.”</p><p>Shiho returns from that meeting and files all the reports she can the next day. To the Student Representative Council, the Principal, the Parent’s Committee, of what she heard Kamoshida say about her and her best friend.</p><p>Nothing happens.</p><p>And Kamoshida calls her over and says, “Hey, I heard what you tried to do. I’m gonna admit, <em>I’m a bit angry.”</em></p><p>Shiho eventually agrees to Kamoshida’s demand for a special after-school lesson after she sees Ann forced into Kamoshida’s car for a drive to a modelling session and no one says anything except spread how Ann’s a slut.</p>
<hr/><p>“Mom, I’m a bit uncomfortable in the volleyball team,” Shiho says, months later. Her arms are filled with bruises. She can feel fingers under her bra and she couldn’t wash it off. She can’t remember the last time she said something at the dinner table, and her dad startles from where he’s watching the TV. “I don’t want to be there anymore.”</p><p>“But Shiho, you love volleyball.”</p><p>“Not anymore,” Shiho shakes her head. “The coach, he…”</p><p>Shiho doesn’t know how to say it.</p><p>It feels so shameful. So dirty. So weirdly distant from her home, where she’s eaten dinner every day since she was a kid.</p><p>“Coach Kamoshida, that Olympian? Wouldn’t he be a great reference for you to get into university, Shiho?” Her mom replies, and Shiho immediately clamps up. “I love you, but you know how we’ve all been banking on a sports scholarship. I’ve seen how hard you’ve worked,” her mom says because she knows nothing because Shiho’s said nothing because she’s afraid her parents will betray her too if she does say something and her mom <em>smiles</em>. “Don’t give up when the going is hard, Shiho! We support you, always.”</p><p>Shiho can’t say anything.</p><p>She goes to her room in silence. Locks the door. Curls up around her phone where she sees Ann smiling back at her and it’s one of her favourite photos because Ann’s let her hair down and it glows around her face and she’s so beautiful. She understands why Kamoshida is so fixated. She understands that she’s the only thing stopping Kamoshida from forcing himself on Ann and no one in school has listened to <em>any</em> of her reports and requests for meetings except Kamoshida himself, who would give her <em>punishment.</em></p><p>“Ann…” Shiho whispers, because she can’t talk to her best friend like before everything, before Shujin. “Ann, I want to run away. Ann, what should I do?”</p><p>Ann doesn’t reply, because she’s just a photograph, after all, and Shiho buries her head in her arms and cries.</p>
<hr/><p>Shiho can’t forget how large his arms were. How large <em>he</em> was. Overpowering. The shadow of him moving, the grunts in her ears. She doesn’t even walk steady out the door this morning, but her mom and dad didn’t say anything at all.</p><p>Ann’s already in class by the time she walks into school. The hallways are empty.</p><p>That’s good.</p><p>There’s no one to stop her.</p><p>Shiho thinks it’s something in her trying to reach <i>something</i> when she climbs the fence. Something that she can’t reach again, something that she can’t ever, ever take back and she needs to reach it or she’ll die inside again and again and again.</p><p>It’s not really her. Shiho loves life. Everyone knows that. The sun in her hair, the morning in her lungs. Birds, with their iridescent glossy feathers that shone <em>just </em>so. Shadows, playing shapes onto the pavement as leaves swayed on trees, shrubs, flowers, plants. Autumn leaves burning bright orange and red and gold and dying brown, and Shiho stamping through them all, laughing, running, kicking, and she wants to climb every tree in the world because that’s just who she is.</p><p>But that something makes her take a deep breath, stare down the stories and think.</p><p>
  <em>That’s not that bad.</em>
</p><p>She lets herself fall and in that infinity she sees Ann’s smile. A promise, innocent and desperately happy.</p><p>Blueberry crepes</p><p>She lands and she doesn’t die.</p>
<hr/><p>Her parents treat her like glass. Ann treats her like glass. The nurses are efficient and helpful and treat her like glass. Her doctor doesn’t treat her like glass but treats her like a suicidal patient who has to be watched and measured.</p><p>Goro Akechi steps in and smiles and treats her like everyone else.</p><p>Shiho is good at reading people, and he isn’t treating her like a pity case. That mask he has on…</p><p>He uses it for everyone.</p><p>That’s good enough, Shiho thinks. That’s alright, and Shiho smiles brightly at him.</p>
<hr/><p>To Shiho’s surprise, even when Akechi’s police interviews stopped, he keeps visiting. A clockwork, once every week in the afternoon. Ann comments on it – <em>‘he’s Akira’s friend, did you know that? He’s pretty nice and friendly, and I’m glad you guys became friends too, Shiho!’</em> and Shiho squints at Ann clumsily slicing an apple apart and thinks back. Thinks of Akechi’s pleasant demeanour and the honest laughter that she can sometimes crack from him and realises.</p><p>They were friends, weren’t they?</p><p>That’s strange. Every single friend she knew that wasn’t Ann saw the label of ‘rape victim’ and ran away. You’d think someone as conscious of his image and reputation like Akechi wouldn’t come and visit someone like her so often.</p><p>But he did.</p><p>When Shiho thinks there’s no one she can safely talk to that isn’t <em>loaded </em>(Shiho’s ugly emotions aren’t supposed to be directed at <em>Ann, </em>because she refuses to blame her even when her emotions want to), Akechi says something a little more acerbic than normal that shares a little misery. When she feels like she’d explode because no one was listening to her, Akechi simply brought her to the roof to scream it out.</p><p>“You really are a prince, Akechi-kun!” Shiho said one day with a little giggle in her voice that’s actually genuine, and Akechi rolls his eyes back at her.</p><p>He would’ve never done that when they first met, and Shiho feels a little happy.</p><p>“How,” Akechi replies, and Shiho shushes him.</p><p>“Secret,” Shiho says because there’s no real way to encapsulate the gratefulness that a person feels when someone saw the worst sides of yourself and just took it in stride. Didn’t judge you for it. Didn’t let it affect how they treated you. When Shiho depended on Akechi time and time again, and Akechi just sighed and shrugged and smiled and did that fake laugh thing and gave her actual advice that told her she was stupid in a way that no one dared to nowadays.</p><p>She had needed someone who hadn’t betrayed her. Her mom and dad, the teachers, Mishima, everyone at school… She’d leave her thoughts on that another day.</p><p>Perhaps Ann would have fit the bill, but Ann was so intricately intertwined with <em>Kamoshida</em> in her mind that it was sometimes so hard to get past it. A shadow that both Shiho and Ann felt when silences stretched too long between them, when silences never existed at all before. Kamoshida, sitting there, leering at the two of them, whispering ‘<em>you both will never be the same’</em> and Shiho hates herself for not <em>being</em> the same when the demon’s gone. Hates herself for speaking up that one time. Hates herself for being so <em>weak</em> that this happened. She hates Ann in her dreams sometimes, because Kamoshida had yelled Ann’s name when <i>that</i> happened and Shiho, Shiho can’t—</p><p>Shiho is ugly, inside-out.</p><p>(“It’s alright,” Akechi said to her. “Everything you’re feeling.”)</p><p>Even if Shiho resented being thrown away trash, hated everything, hated herself, hated what she did, hated how she’d never be uncracked again?</p><p>(“Yes. Those are all understandable, Suzui-san.)</p><p>His eyes, Shiho had noticed, had been full of sympathy. Never pity. Shiho could only laugh at that point because Akechi was really the only person she could say these feelings to, because her therapist would just listen and use it to mark down her mental recovery and she wanted <em>out out out</em>.</p><p>“You’re a prince and that’s my final verdict, Akechi-kun!” Shiho finally says before she hides her smile behind her hands. “If you want to guess… Maybe it’s because of the shape of your eyebrows? They’re so elegant!”</p><p>Akechi raises one of those impeccable eyebrows at her, and Shiho wants to tell him.</p><p>Akechi-kun, I looked at Ann in the eye today without thinking of Kamoshida.</p><p>Akechi-kun, I talked to the first large man since Kamoshida because he was your friend.</p><p>Akechi-kun, he was really nice, just like you. I was so proud of myself.</p><p>Akechi-kun, let’s get crepes someday. You like sweets, right?</p><p>Instead, Shiho smiles and says something inane because she doesn’t know how to say all these emotions yet.</p>
<hr/><p>Ah, that’s it. That’s what it was.</p><p>When she stood on Shujin’s roof and managed to muster a smile over the stone on her chest.</p><p>When she looked at Ann, stepped forward and hugged her and said <em>‘I love you</em>’ for the first time in months and didn’t feel a second presence, a guilt, that something that pushed her to the roof in the first place.</p><p>When she smiled, from the bottom of her heart to Ann.</p><p>At him.</p><p>
  <em>“Thank you, Akechi-kun.”</em>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>If people were to talk about great mothers, Wakaba would probably be not on the hundredth page of whatever God’s ranking for that crap. <em>Most</em> mothers would probably never encourage their child when they realise they were the head of an international hacktivist group but, <em>ey</em>, her baby being such a smart bean just made her very proud, and her only duty was to make sure every single target was <em>actually </em>a baddy.</p><p>She knew Futaba enough to know that if she ever targeted someone innocent, she’d have nightmares for a long time. Personally, Wakaba would just laugh if she accidentally trod on someone's toes, but she’s now a shining beacon of morality for a pair of innocent eyes so she coughs instead.</p><p>“Futaba, don’t hurt others, okay? Eventually, that becomes a hurt on <em>you.”</em></p><p>“Then why are the kids in school so mean?” Futaba asks back, tugging at her black hair until the bits in her hands were in knots. “They like calling me names and making fun of me.”</p><p>“Well,” Wakaba says to stall for time, “those kids are dumber than you. Not that you should say that. Anyway, one day they’ll realise how stupid they were to be mean to you, but that’ll take a few more years because their brain hasn’t developed to that point yet and morality is still a concept they’re absorbing episode by episode from anime. That’s why they’re so slow.”</p><p>“So they’re just stupid?” Futaba echoes, scrunching up her face, and Wakaba pats her on the back and tries to rephrase it a bit.</p><p>“And you’re very, very smart,” Wakaba says next to salvage the situation, “and you know what happens in herd mentality when there’s an anomaly.”</p><p>“It gets pushed out,” Futaba replies, morose, and Wakaba sighs.</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>“Why doesn’t that happen in anime?” Futaba asks next, and Wakaba thinks this is why she hates all children that weren’t Futaba, because she would let no other child climb onto her lap and cinch skinny arms right around her ribcage and dig a sharp chin into her collarbone and still think they were, <em>miraculously enough, </em>cute for being so touchy-feely.</p><p>“Well,” she says to Futaba’s scalp. Hmm, dandruff. Maybe they need a new brand of shampoo. “Anime is filled with heroes. Heroes don’t abandon those in need.”</p><p>“What’s a hero?”</p><p>“A hero,” Wakaba says, resting her chin on the whorl right in front of her, “is a good person. Someone who does good deeds and saves the weak. They don’t discriminate, they don’t bully, they’re kind and forgives others and makes sure that the world they see does the same.”</p><p>“…I’m not hero material,” Futaba says, face still mushed to her collarbone. Wakaba settles a little more comfortably on the couch, eyes resting on the blank screen of their TV, as she listens. “I don’t want to forgive those bullies. They’re bad people, and I don’t want to be a good person back.”</p><p>“That’s fine,” Wakaba soothes. “Heroes are hard to be, you know. Just be a normal person, Futaba. Do what you want, but only when you know it doesn’t hurt others. You don’t want someone feeling the way you’re feeling now, do you? I’ll be disappointed if you become a bully, Futaba.”</p><p>“<em>Never, </em>mom!<em>”</em></p><p>“Good. Be kind to those you want to be kind to. Fill your day with things you know you want to do. There’s not much else in life to do except for this, especially since you’re a kid. I’m paying all your bills for you so that you can figure out who you are in peace, you know? Do what you want, and I’ll be there with you always.”</p><p>“Because I’m smart?” Futaba asks, and Wakaba really wonders what’s going in her child’s head sometimes because <em>really.</em></p><p>“No,” Wakaba replies with a laugh that makes Futaba sit up with an indignant look on her face. That is, until Wakaba finishes her reply. “Because you’re Futaba Ishikki, you’re my daughter, and I love you.”</p><p>Her silly baby bursts into tears.</p><p>Oh <em>dear,</em> Wakaba thinks as she represses all unsavoury thoughts deep in her brain, including perhaps hacking into the security cameras of Futaba’s school and checking out who these ‘<em>mean kids’</em> were, because she’s a good example, okay.</p><p>“Crybaby,” Wakaba sighs fondly even as she draws Futaba close again, and oh man, another shirt going into the wash. Kids sure were snotty.</p><p>“I’m not,” Futaba protests while crying.</p><p>Totally illogical, but that’s okay.</p><p>Later on that evening, Wakaba tucks Futaba into bed and proceeds to rest her feet on the blanket, leaning back on Futaba’s tiny chair as she places her laptop on her lap. Futaba didn’t want to sleep alone but work hardly <em>waited.</em></p><p>“<em>I love you too, mom,” </em>Wakaba hears a whisper.</p><p>When Wakaba looks up a few seconds after that registers, Futaba has turned her back to Wakaba. The only thing that she could see was a spray of black hair untucked underneath the blankets, and Wakaba can’t help laughing.</p><p>Her kid was the cutest.</p><p>
  
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  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I promised a chapter for 4000 kudos and <i>haha</i> look at me doing this when marigolds is nearing 5000 <i> oh dear</i>. 4000 kudos *uwah* you guys are insane.<br/>I hope you guys liked it. Shiho's reached Rank 10 so she gets a short snippet, and Wakaba and Futaba (i love you wakaba ;__;), Yusuke introspection and Naoto IT! That was a highly requested one XD. I need to get used to writing them more ^^' Thanks to 2000 IQ for editing Yusuke's bit hehe &lt;3&lt;3</p><p>This is me also posting because I missed a weekly update cough. see you soon!<br/>probably when 5000 kudos hits aye. Hikaru next then ^^ with random miscellaneous scenes again~ Sae... maybe soon ufu.<br/>Thank you for being here and reading *bows*</p>
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